


At Least Wings of a Dove Would’ve Been Poetic

by outsideth3box



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Ancient Devices, Humor, M/M, SGA Secret Santa Fic Exchange, Sheppard/McKay - Freeform, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-04 21:40:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3091265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outsideth3box/pseuds/outsideth3box
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John isn’t usually a size queen, but...</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Least Wings of a Dove Would’ve Been Poetic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Taste_is_Sweet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taste_is_Sweet/gifts).



And then there was the time Rodney touched the Ancient _thing_ , and *POOF*! Suddenly there was a bright green light and a ripping sound and Rodney was chanting “Ow, ow, ow, ow!” and when the bright light faded, John dropped his sidearm, because, well, wings. Rodney had large, gorgeous, graceful, white wings poking from the torn back of his BDU shirt. Wings.

John gaped for a split second, then began edging closer to the _thing_ and Rodney yelled, “Oh, no you don’t, Colonel Leaps-Before-He-Looks!” But he was too late. John _accidentally_ brushed against the _thing_ and was *POOFED* in turn.

“Oops,” he said.

“I can’t believe you! You are such an idiot! You don’t even know if this situation is reversible! What if we now have permanent bird parts? I never knew you could be quite this stupid.” Rodney reached out and smacked John upside the head. It felt very satisfying, so he did it again.

John split his attention between fending off head-slaps and trying to twist around far enough to see his own wings.

“Stop it, Rodney! Rodney, stop! I can’t see my wings, what’s happening?” John backed away from Rodney’s slappy hands and started turning in circles, peering over his own shoulder. “Rodney, I can’t see anything, can you?”

“What are you talking about, can’t see…? Oh, my god! Ha! Hahahahahaha!” Rodney burst out laughing, pointing at John’s back. “Ha-hahaha-ha! You have...you have…!”

“What? What do I have?” John was starting to freak out now. “Rodney, stop laughing and tell me! I have what?”

“You have tiny little pigeon wings! Oh my god, they are so cute! Haha-ha-hahaha!” Rodney clutched at his sides, bent over laughing.

“PIGEON WINGS?” John’s face fell. “No! Why do I have…? What happened? Stop laughing, Rodney, this is not funny!” John could feel his face flushing. “Damn it, Rodney, stop it!”

Rodney finally started trying to pull himself together, wiping tears from his eyes, although every time he looked at John he chuckled a bit.

“Okay, okay. Let’s see what’s what here,” Rodney said with a gusty sigh. “Turn around.”

“No.”

“What? Are you joking? Turn around and let me examine them,” Rodney insisted.

“No. You laughed at me. I’ll wait for Carson to examine them. Oh, hell,” John said, horrified. “Carson is going to have to examine them. Pigeon wings? Seriously? But you…” He trailed off, staring longingly at Rodney’s magnificent wings.

“No no no,” Rodney said. “Do not give me or these wings the big puppy eyes. This is not a desirable occurrence. Wings are not needful things for humans.”

John just looked sad.

“Come on, Woeful Joe, we have to get back to Atlantis and send a non-ATA carrying crew back to figure out how to reverse this mess.” He clicked his radio and said, “Teyla, Ronon.”

“Yes, Rodney?”

“Are you ready to head back?”

“We can be. Ronon has taken off his coat and filled it with ripe trookis fruit in hopes that the cooks will be able to make some pies.”

“Pies? Okay then. We’ve had a bit of an adventure here, so we need to get back to Atlantis and concentrate on fixing it. Meet you back at the gate.”

“Fixing it? Are you and the Colonel alright?”

“Yes, mostly. Well, we aren’t hurt, anyway. So, see you there?”

“Yes, see you there.”

While Rodney had been busy with Teyla on the radio, John had packed up the rest of their gear and was ready to go. He handed Rodney his pack and just smirked at the glare he got for touching Rodney’s things.

-o-

Elizabeth was waiting at the railing above the gate room when the four stepped through the ring. Her eyes went wide and she actually stammered. “What…? Rodney… wings?”

Rodney’s wings flared gracefully and the occupants of the gateroom all said, “Oooooh!” at the same time. For his part, Rodney just glared.

“Yes, yes, wings. Very pretty. Now, somebody get a team of non-gene carriers together, get back there and figure out how to get them _off_ me!”

When everyone just continued staring, he bellowed, “NOW!”

And then there was chaos.

In the midst of the commotion, Elizabeth came down the stairs with her hand on her radio. Rodney couldn’t hear what she was saying, but he presumed she was calling Carson. When she reached the team she confirmed this. “Carson is on his way, Rodney. Is anyone else, uh, altered, in any way?”

“We don’t need Carson, Elizabeth, we’re fine, we just need to get the new team moving as quickly as possible,” Rodney said, impatiently.

“We?” Asked Elizabeth. “Who else is affected?”

John just looked at the floor and scuffed his foot. Rodney poked him in the arm and said, “Turn around, pigeon-boy.”

As John turned, Elizabeth said, “Pigeon-? Oh, my!” She brought her hand up to stifle a giggle.

John turned back around and glared, but Elizabeth was apparently glare-proof. He was sure he heard a few muffled chuckles from around the room, but when he expanded his glare range to include the chucklers, everyone was studiously attending to their own business.

Just then Carson Beckett appeared from behind a wandering marine, and stood for a moment, staring at Rodney’s wings. Behind him were a pair of medics pushing a gurney.

Carson cleared his throat noisily, “So, ah, what happened here, then?” He took Rodney by the arm and tried to steer him toward the gurney. Rodney quickly jerked his arm from Carson’s grasp and growled.

“I don’t need a ride to the infirmary, Carson! I can walk just fine, as you can clearly see. In fact, I could probably fly.”

John whimpered. Carson’s head spun in his direction like a heat-seeking missile, “Aye, then, Rodney. Now what’s happened to the Colonel here?”

“Ha!” Rodney hooted. “What happened to Colonel-mmmph!” John grabbed Rodney’s arm, slapping his hand over his mouth, and immediately Rodney grabbed back at him, flailing at John’s arms and head with his feathery new appendages. Carson stepped in as a feather floated to the floor.

“Now, gentlemen, let’s not do each other an injury,” he said, as the men grappled.

“Let’s talk about this in the infirmary, huh?” John gritted out between clenched teeth, one hand still clamped over Rodney’s mouth.

Rodney rolled his eyes but nodded, frowning at the feather on the floor. John finally let go.

“You’re a sick man, Colonel,” Rodney pointed. “Look at this, your malicious manhandling is costing me body parts.”

A quiet “Aaaaaaw,” came from behind John, where Carson stood looking at his miniscule wings, one arm raised as if to touch them. John spun, scowling, and Carson flinched and drew back his hand.

“Yes, ahem, well, let’s get the two of you to the infirmary, shall we?” He turned to Teyla and Ronon, who were still standing just outside the splash zone, grinning hugely at the show. “And how are you two doing, then? Any new appendages I need to know about?”

Teyla turned her bright smile on Carson and replied, “No, Doctor. At the time of the transformations of both Doctor McKay and Colonel Sheppard, Ronon and I were gathering fruit outside the ruins and nowhere near the device which produced the wings. We are fine.”

Ronon shrugged his shoulder, over which his leather coat hung like a sack, nearly bursting with sweet-smelling fruit.

“Pies,” he rumbled.

Carson blinked. “Well, won’t that be lovely. Still, you’ll be wanting your post-mission checkup, so come along.”

Ronon immediately headed up the stairs. “Kitchen first,” he said, and disappeared.

Carson looked after him and turned to Teyla. “He will just drop off the fruit and then come for his checkup, Doctor Beckett,” she assured him.

He sighed. “Fine. _Now_ can we please go to the infirmary so I can examine these boys’, er, wings?”

 

 

-o-

 

 

By the time they all got to the infirmary, Rodney was thoroughly done being stared at, and John was limping after trying so hard to walk directly in front of Carson the whole way and getting his heels stepped on.

John and Rodney followed Carson into the examination room of the infirmary, while Teyla took a chair in the waiting room. John managed one last flick of Rodney’s ear before Carson separated them to opposites sides of the examination room.

Rodney screeched. “Ow! Ow, ow, ow! Carson! make him stop!” Then he turned abruptly to his side of the room and smacked John on the back of his head with his wing.

“Carson,” John mimicked in a childlike voice as he settled on a gurney. “make him stop!”

“Oh, you are so infantile! I can’t see how you even made it into the military, let alone made it to Lieutenant Colonel. No wonder you got the tiny baby pigeon wings!” Rodney jeered.

“Alright! It’s time for you two grown men to stop behaving like children, settle down, and tell me what happened.” Carson moved to Rodney and began trying to find a way to get his shirt off, finally resorting to a pair of scissors.

“Well,” began Rodney. “ _I_ touched the device accidentally-”

“So did I!” John growled.

“Yeah, right, if you call rubbing your body all over it like a cat ‘accidentally’, then-”

“I did not rub-”

“You slithered your slinky self right over to it the minute you saw-”

“SLINKY?”

“Gentlemen!” Carson interrupted. “Please. Can one of you just describe the incident without all this foofaraw?”

“Foofaraw?” Both men muttered the word under their respective breaths and grinned at each other across the room for a moment, then remembered that they were angry and scowled instead.

“Okay,” Rodney said. “Like I said, I touched the device accidentally. Well, no. I didn’t _touch_ it accidentally, I touched it on purpose, but I didn’t mean to activate it. I must be getting better with my synthetic gene-”

*Cough*”fake!”*cough*, said John into his fist.

“ _Synthetic_ gene. Ahem. As I was saying, the device activated without my telling it to, and there was a bright green light and then a sharp pain and then I had wings. Wings! Can you even imagine what those lunatic Ancients had going on in their minds when they built _that_ one?”

“Pain, you say, Rodney? Where was the pain, and can you describe it to me, please?” Carson tentatively touched one of the wings..

“Yes, pain. When the wings appeared they were all bent up inside my shirt, but, once they tore through it, the pain went away. But they could have been sprained, or at least bruised. Come to think of it, they do feel a little tender. You should check them, Carson; you have my permission to touch them.”

“Rodney, lad, I’m not a veterinarian, I know nothing about wings. I can tell you if something feels broken or if they look bruised, but I canna tell you if they are sprained or whatnot,” Carson said, while running his hand gently down the main bone of one wing.

“So, how did Colonel Sheppard get, er, transformed as well, then, if you already knew what the device did?” Carson did sound a bit distracted, but there was a note of confusion there as well.

“Well,” mumbled John, “The machine was already on when I accidentally-”

“Tell the truth, Colonel!” Rodney said with glee in his voice. “Be a big boy and own up to it. He touched it on purpose, Carson, _because_ he knew what it did.”

“That’s _not_ the truth!” John insisted. “Why would I want wings?”

Both Carson and Rodney turned and stared at John, eyes wide with disbelief.

John blushed deeply and ducked his head. “Well, yeah. Okay. But I didn’t touch it on purpose, I swear.”

“Pants on fire!” sang Rodney.

“Rodney, enough,” said Carson. “It hardly matters at this point whether he touched the device on purpose or not, I just want to know what happened when he did.”

“It was about the same as McKay said, a bright flash of light, a quick pain, and then wings.” John said.

“If you want to call those stubby little things wings!” Rodney said, laughing. “Pigeon wings! I’d stay away from Zelenka if I were you, Sheppard.”

 

-o-

 

 

The debrief with Elizabeth went pretty much the same.

 

-o-

 

 

John sidled out of the conference room just as Sergeant Kepler and his team, including Zelenka, were readying to leave for the wing-machine planet. He hurried down the stairs and rushed over to Zelenka’s side, keeping his front facing Zelenka. Just in case.

“Yes, Colonel? There is something?” asked Radek.

“Uh…” John blushed, scrubbing his face as if to rub the red away.

“Yes? We must leave now, so if there is a thing you need…?

“Well. I. Uh,” John stepped closer and ducked his head near to Zelenka’s ear. “I’d like it if you could find out why McKay got the good wings.”

Radek’s eyes went wide and a little watery with the effort of suppressing his laughter, but he nodded sincerely and turned back to his team.

John fled.

 

-o-

 

 

The loud crash from inside Rodney’s lab hastened John’s footsteps as he approached. The sound of Rodney’s voice raised in anger caused him to pause outside the door and peek cautiously around the jamb.

“-And there should NOT be fragile instruments just sitting around on benches!” He paused for breath, still waving his arms emphatically, his wings flapping in sync.

John stepped around the door into the room. Rodney turned at the motion and something else tinkled as it smashed on the floor.

“Or delicate devices! And who is touching my wing? _Stop touching me_!” Rodney roared, visibly shaking with rage.

“Okay,” John said, stepping into the doorway. “Seems like a good time for a break. Doesn’t it seem like a good time for a break?” He looked squarely at Miko Kusanagi, who withdrew her hand quickly.

“That? Is an excellent idea! Not that any of you would recognize an excellent idea if it ran over you like a truck, but I am _telling_ you that it’s an excellent idea, so take heed! All of you!” Rodney’s glare turned upon poor Simpson, who was sitting quietly on a stool, and she and all of the other scientists in the room hurried meekly past John, grasping tightly to any fragile belongings.

As soon as the room was empty but for Rodney, John walked in, closing and locking the door behind him. He surveyed the mess of smashed and cracked items littering the floor.

“Rodney?” He reached out to touch Rodney on the shoulder, but Rodney stiffened and pulled away.

“When will Zelenka be back?” he demanded.

“They just left. It will be a while,” John said. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on, Sheppard, everything’s peachy! I can’t control these stupid wings. Every time I gesture, they flap like.. like… like stupid wings! I wave my hands, I turn, I barely move and there goes another valuable object, broken on the floor! My back aches already. I can’t imagine how I’m going to fit them into the shower, or… or how I’m going to sleep. Our bed is barely big enough for the two of us! I can’t go on offworld missions like this! I mean, you can hide yours under your shirt, but obviously I can’t. I had to cut up another shirt just to be decently covered. And people keep handling them, like they can just _do_ that!” His shoulders slumped and at the same time his wings drooped. “I broke my favorite coffee mug.”

John cautiously approached Rodney and embraced him. He stiffened again and tried to pull away, but John ignored it and held on, placing his hands on Rodney’s lower back to avoid his wings. “We’ll figure it out. Maybe Zelenka will come back with the reversal procedure and we can get everything back to normal.”

Right on cue, Rodney snorted. “Normal,” he muttered.

“Meanwhile,” John continued. “Why don’t we take a walk down to the East pier and work on your control? I bet with practice you can fold them up like birds do. Hey, maybe you were right earlier, maybe you _can_ fly!”

“I’m not going to try to fly, Sheppard, that’s your fantasy, remember? I haven’t got time for these shenanigans, and anyway, I’m not some crazy, freaky-haired daredevil like some people I know!”

John could hear amusement in Rodney’s voice trying to break through, so he knew he was on the right track.

“But Rodney, you could do barrel rolls, and race the not-really-seagulls, and dive-bomb Cadman with stale muffins whenever she goes outside!” John pulled Rodney tighter and rubbed his cheek against his.

“Barrel rolls!” Rodney didn’t quite yell. “I don’t even like it when you do barrel rolls in the jumpers, John Sheppard, as you well know. And those are mostly safe. Why would I want to do them in my unprotected and very breakable body several thousand feet up in the air? Actually, why would I want to _go_ several thousand feet into the air?

“But Rawd-neeeeeeeeee!” John whined. He dropped his head and mumbled into Rodney’s shoulder.

“Hmmm? What was that, Sheppard?” Rodney asked.

John heaved a great sigh and said again, louder, “I said, that’s what I would do. And I totally would, but I can’t, ‘cause I got the tiny little wings. But you can ‘cause you got the great big wings!”

Rodney stilled in John’s arms. “Yes, it’s what you would do, John. I know that, and I’m sorry I got the big wings and you didn’t, it doesn’t seem fair. As if anything in the universe is ever fair, especially anything having to do with those bloody-minded Ancients. I swear, if I could meet just one, I don’t know if I would bludgeon them to death or strangle them a little bit first.”

John and Rodney’s radios pinged at the same time and they both reached up to activate them.

“Colonel Sheppard? Doctor McKay? This is Doctor Weir. Doctor Zelenka has radioed through the gate that Doctor Sanchez has translated the inscription on the wall near the device. It seems that the transformations are self-limiting, they will only last two or three days at most and then you will transform back to your normal bodies. Sergeant Kepler’s team will be returning shortly.”

“Understood, Doctor Weir,” John said. “Did the inscription say anything else?”

Rodney could see the hopeful look on John’s face, even if Elizabeth couldn’t.

“No, it was fairly straightforward, comparatively speaking. There will be a complete transcription in his report.”

John’s face fell and Rodney took over.

“Thank you, then, Doctor Weir. McKay and Sheppard out.”

Rodney turned to John. “What else did you want to know from the inscription?”

“Nothing. I just-” John drooped even further.

“John.”

“I just wanted to know why you got the gorgeous big beautiful wings and I got the stupid little teeny tiny pigeon wings,” John huffed.

Rodney stared. “Is this where I am supposed to wax philosophic about the delicate beauty of the pigeon? Because I think you’ll need Zelenka for that. But…”

John looked up. “But?”

“I’d be willing to bet that yours are just as sensitive to touch as mine,” Rodney said with a sly grin.

“You mean you want to…?” John perked up. And then John _perked up_. “Ooh! That sounds-”

Rodney grabbed his hand as John thought the door unlocked. People made way for them in the corridors, stopping and staring, but at least this time, it was because of the wings.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my wonderful beta, darkhavens for her excellent work and for the title and summary.
> 
> SGA Secret Santa Exchange gift for Taste_is_sweet.


End file.
